Page 33 of Running Scared
The place gave ham hocks to big dogs if they were asked, and Catherine got a long, happy gnaw on a rare treat.
Two hours after Val had parked in the hardpacked parking lot—not the only big rig there by far—they all started out again, only now Bailey felt a little less crazed.
Of course he had yet to be grilled by his father, either.
Val’s cheerful injunction to make free with the Wi-Fi and watch a movie or something on the screen secured to the back of one of the seats felt—to Bailey anyway—like an invitation to throw up in the impossibly tiny bathroom tucked into a recess near the foot of the sleeper bed, so he and Connor both declined.
But after fifteen minutes of dissecting the barbecue (a habit for some Texans, an obsession for others), an uneasy silence fell, and Bailey felt compelled to break it.
“So, uhm… any questions?”
“Tons,” Connor said dryly.“But first, skydiving.Was it everything you ever thought it would be?”
Bailey had to smile.He’d dreamed of flying as a child, and Connor was the one who told him he’d have to try skydiving—but not when the older man knew he was going to do it, because, as he proclaimed, “My ticker can’t take it!”
“It was amazing,” Bailey confessed to his father.“Just… justamazing.Not like falling at all.It really was like flying.And when the chute caught air—it was so peaceful.Dad, I’m telling you, that was worth waiting for.”
“Glad to hear it,” Connor said, chuckling and settling back on the sleeper so Catherine could join him.Neither Rory nor Val had made any complaints about the dog, and Bailey was grateful.Catherine had gotten both the Dodge men through a really tough time.Now she rested her chin on Connor’s lap and gazed at him with adoring eyes while he absently fondled her ears.
“What about you?”Bailey asked slyly.“You always said you wanted to—what was it?‘Greet the open road’?”Next to him, Mr.Bumble made a plaintive meow, so Bailey opened the top of the carrier and smoothed his fur.The cat had enjoyed the walk around the field surrounding the barbecue pit, and Bailey had been grateful he’d chosen to relieve himself off in the tall grass as the lead went taut.But Mr.Bumble wasn’t used toanyof this, and Bailey recognized the need for comfort when it yowled at him.
Connor snorted.“I do like this little compartment back here,” he acknowledged.“But I would definitely miss my recliner—and my walks in the morning with Catherine, here.”He sighed, and Bailey knew it was because his neighborhood had become more and more developed in the past five years.While Connor Dodge wouldn’t have said anything, Bailey woke up from nightmares of the two of them getting run off the road because it felt like the place was all blacktop, no sidewalks, with more cars every day.
“We’ll find you a better place after this,” Bailey promised him.His father had moved to the burgeoning suburb shortly after Bailey’s mother had died, while Bailey had still been in med school.At the time it was closer to Bailey, his only family, and far enough from the city for comfort.
“I’d as soon find a place nearyou,son,” Connor said with some asperity, “but I get the feeling you might not come back to roost in Austin when this is done.”
And now there they were.
“Dad, Dean and I are very new—”
“Sure, sure.”
“And Dean doesn’t even live in Austin.I’ve got the ER—”
“Of course you do.”
“And Dean has family.I mean, you canseethat Dean has family.”
“Yes, he does.Good family.”
“I mean, I don’t even know what we were doing in the first place,” he finished bitterly, because all of his father’s “sure, sures” were most certainlynotin any sort of agreement.
There was a taut silence.
“You done now, son?”
“Yes,” Bailey said, pouting and unable to stop.
“Let’s start with the new.”
“Wearenew.”
Connor gave a short bark of a laugh.“Bailey, you and Emmett had been together since med school.In that entire time would you have let Emmett throw you out of an airplane?”
Bailey scowled.“Emmett wouldneverhave thrown me out of an airplane,” he said.
“No.Emmett was a thinker and a planner and a good man,” Connor Dodge said soberly.“But he was not a seat-of-the-pants thinker, and he wasn’t the sort to improvise.And yet you trusted this guy enough to go with him anyway.Why is that?”
